


Duplicate

by ottermo



Series: Predictions [4]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen, Series 3 Predictions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-08 00:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14682450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Leo can't remember why he's afraid of the newest synth in Max's commune.





	Duplicate

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Series 3 Predictions challenge on tumblr, but I'm uploading late so promo material has contradicted it by now. Just posting for posterity!

They arrive at the safehouse just before nightfall, to find it much more crowded than it was that morning. Max and Flash seek out as many of the new ones as they can, hugging and swapping names, letting them know they’re safe. Mattie hangs back for a while, seeing how many of them watch her with wary green eyes. Many have been mistreated, that much is obvious. Some even flinch at  _Flash’s_  approach, and Mattie can’t imagine a person less intimidating than the pink-haired synth dressed in dungarees. In time, they’ll learn to trust, she hopes. For now, she slumps down on the battered couch next to Leo.

“Good work today,” she says, and earns a tired smile.

“You too.”

He is fumbling in his bag for his charger, which has a slightly different attachment to the regulation Persona cable. He’s still searching when the door behind them opens and Mattie turns, expecting to see Max back again.

Instead, she sees a different face, one she thought she’d never see again. A brunette synth dressed in a red boiler suit, streaked with grease and dirt but unmistakably the same.

Breath catches in Mattie’s throat. It cannot be Hester. Hester is dead. Niska killed her on Mattie’s own living room floor. They still have the dents to prove it. This is— it  _can’t_ be—

And it isn’t, of course. The label on her suit might say “Hester” and she might be physically identical in every way to the one they knew, but Mattie’s always known the Hester model wasn’t a Unique. Industrial synths are mass-produced, thousands of units with the same face.

It’s still haunting, though. Suddenly Mattie can feel an iron grip around her arm, and she’s transported back to that day in the woods, sees anger and hate in those young eyes—

“Hello,” says the synth in the doorway, and Mattie snaps back to herself. She’s staring. She shouldn’t stare. It isn’t this Hester’s fault that she looks so much like a killer.

Her heartbeat becomes steadier when she reminds herself that Leo won’t be affected by this, that he’s shown absolutely no signs of recollecting anything that happened between leaving Fred in the crypt and waking up in Athena’s lab. The Tree of Life program had backed up all five Elster siblings when they activated it, so to everyone’s relief they’d never lost as much of Leo as originally feared. That would work in his favour now. Mattie just had to keep her own cool.

She stands up from the couch, rearranging her face to something friendly. “Hey,” she says. “I’m Mattie. I’m a friend.”

Hester smiles, and it’s actually sweet, somehow. It still gives Mattie chills, but nothing she can’t handle.

“We’re all friends here,” Hester says.

“That’s right.”

Hester’s attention flicks away from Mattie, her head listing slightly to one side. “What’s wrong with your friend?”

Mattie whirls around, and sees Leo looking up at them, his eyes wide. Given the kind of lives they lead, she’s seen Leo scared more than once, but this is nothing like that. It’s wilder, almost beast-like. There is an emptiness about it that reminds of her of his first days of consciousness, more than a year ago.

She does her best to speak calmly to Hester, but is filled with a need to be rid of her. “Could you fetch my other friend, please? His name is Max. Somebody will point him out to you.”

Hester leaves the way she came and Mattie goes back to Leo, tries to get him to meet her eyes.

“Leo? It’s okay. You’re not in danger.”

His voice is strained and confused, breath ragged. “Who was that?”

Mattie frowns. “You don’t know? Then why—”

Leo shakes his head slightly, and suddenly looks much more himself, if a little self-conscious. “I only know she scares me to death. I can’t—” He frowns. “Should I know who she is?”

Mattie bites her lip, then says, hesitantly, “No. I mean, you  _have_  seen her face before, but it was during the Gap. I don’t know how she can possibly scare you if you don’t have those memories anymore, but, yeah. You knew one of her duplicates. She was… not great.”

“Define not great.”

Mattie huffs. “Well, you didn’t get a hole in your head from  _me_.”

“O-oh.” Leo looks intrigued now, which is much better than ‘paralysed with terror’.

“This is kind of exciting,” says Mattie. “It means there must have been  _some_  crossover to your organic brain. Maybe not into the memory centre? Something more basic. That seemed pretty…primal.”

He shivers. “Yep.”

“You never know. Maybe there’s more in there somewhere.” Mattie grins. “Just try not to have any memory blasts at inconvenient moments, mmm? We’re kind of fighting a war here.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Good one.”

Max enters rather unceremoniously, looking very concerned. “Is everything alright?”

“Hey, Max. Yeah.” Mattie stands back up. “Sorry to send you such a scary messenger.”

“It was quite unnerving,” Max admits.

“Yeah. You think we can convince her to get a haircut or something?”

Max doesn’t pay much attention to her quip, looking at Leo instead. Mattie follows his gaze.

“He had a bit of a freakout. Which is kind of fascinating, right? He doesn’t remember her at all. But something in his brain knows Hester’s face is bad news.”

Leo looks at her reproachfully. “I am here, you know.”

“Sorry.” Mattie mimes zipping her lips, and mentally berates Sophie for instilling that habit so deeply in her.

Leo shrugs. “She’s right, Maxie. I don’t know how, but I reacted to that synth without having any memories. She’s from the Gap. I shouldn’t know about her at all.”

Max considers this for a moment. “I wonder if we can replicate this.”

Leo looks wary. “No thanks.”

“Not with Hester. Somebody else from the Gap.” Max takes his phone out of his pocket, scrolls for a while, and shows Leo a picture.

Mattie watches his face change again. Not fear this time. Colder.

“Do you feel anything?” Max prompts.

“I— I don’t know who he is,” says Leo, “But it’s… a sad picture. And I’m angry, I think? God, this is weird.”

Max pockets the phone. “Sadness and anger would be appropriate responses, if you knew who this was.” He studies Leo intently. “It seems you can still have emotional responses to Gap stimuli without knowing anything of the events that took place.”

Mattie raises her eyebrows. “Huh. Like Mia storing herself in her sensory loop. He’s stuck his memories in the wrong drive and they can only open as vague feelings?”

“Please don’t put your computer metaphors on my biological brain,” Leo says, with a halfhearted grin.

“She might be right, though,” Max says. “It’s possible some of Father’s grafts did link the two halves of your brain together more closely than we realised.”

“Lucky me.”

If Leo has more to say, it’s cut off by the sound of an alarm.

“That’s the perimeter guard,” says Max, snapping to attention.

“Oh, well, this was a nice bit of downtime, for all of ten minutes,” Mattie grumbles. She and Leo look dutifully to Max for their next move.


End file.
